Monday, August 31, 2009

Today is officially the last day of my cleanse! A roaring success so far to boot. I'll be re-introducing myself to food today as per the instructions of the Blessed Herbs.

First thing this morning I was yet again greeted with the unmistakable signs of mucoid plaque.

Unbelievable really. And after I got home from my morning errand run I got out more than double this amount. I'm still amazed at how much is coming out...

Today I'll be eating very small amounts, per the instructions of Blessed Herbs.

Breakfast:

1 coffee with soy creamer

1 small apple - chewed thoroughly and slowly

Lunch:

I small salad with a bit of dressing

Dinner:

Small piece of fish with some steamed veggies or a small salad

After breakfast, I went out to my local health food store to get some groceries and felt a bit light headed, even though I had my apple. And after dragging 4 bags of groceries and 6 gallons of distilled water up my flight of stairs, I crashed into bed for 10 minutes or so to recover. My salad and half a liter of water revived me quite a bit.

My lovely sister, Miss Priscilla, and her adorable husband Michael will be coming over here for dinner and so now I must go and get my salmon ready for their arrival.

I'll be working out my next Rawvenge move over the course of the next few days and will keep you posted on the next step in my plan towards health and weight loss.

Today is the last day of my juice fast.Yippee!!! I admit I got a bit hungry today and am ready to be done with all this endless toxin absorber. I got out a lot more of the mucoid plaque today as well. It wasn't quite as impressive as yesterday, so I'm not bothering to show any pictures.

A total of 50 pounds of apples was juiced during this fast. And I made 4 double batches of the vegetable broth (that's 16 liters of broth) and drank another 10 liters of water during the last 5 days. Whew! No wonder I spent so much time in the bathroom.

There's quite a bit of the digestive absorber left and, according to the instructions, I'll be taking that until it's gone. Blessed Herbs says that I can get out quite a bit more mucoid plaque even after the fast is over if I continue to take all of the digestive absorber.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

We have entered the muciod plaque zone! I was very pleased this morning to discover that my first movement of the day was an icky disgusting release of mucoid plaque.

Then, less than an hour later I got out over 24 inches more of the same disgusting stuff (some I left in the toilet bowl as the pieces were too small and slippery). That's a 24 inch ruler I put down next to the plaque to show how long it is. It's even more impressive when you consider that I haven't been eating and that ALL of what is coming out has been stuck up there for a really long time.

I've been rejoicing ever since! I'm really impressed with the efficacy of the Blessed Herbs product. I haven't had any discomfort; no spasms, cramps, hunger pangs, or sick feelings of any kind. So far everything has passed easily with no straining or constipation.

Friday, August 28, 2009

I did not sleep so well last night despite the chamomile tea. I had to get up to go to the bathroom about 3 times and didn't get uninterrupted sleep. I'm tired today as a result and a bit cranky. I had my coffee and went straight into my first toxin absorber and now I feel better. The apple juice is nicely refreshing.

My bowels did a nice elimination this morning, but still no mucoid plaque. I know it's kinda gross, but I really want to get that stuff out. I need to see it to believe it.

The rest of today went as expected. I took all my toxin absorber rounds and finished up with 4 digestive stimulators and a cup of chamomile tea with liquid stevia. I'm still going to the bathroom constantly but I feel fine and haven't had a cleansing reaction yet. We'll see what tomorrow will bring...

Thursday, August 27, 2009

I slept very well last night on account of the chamomile tea and felt quite well on arising. I needed to run some errands today, so I had my coffee and ran out to shop and hit the bank. I felt a bit light headed and goofy in the Wally-Mart, so I went right back home to get going on all my toxin absorber rounds. I felt better almost immediately once I drank the apple juice and had my first round of pills.

I also changed my coffee. I decided to make a half and half blend of coffee with Teeccino, which is an herbal coffee substitute. I bought the almond amaretto flavor and it's soooooo good! This particular blend contains: organic carob, organic barley, organic dates, chicory, organic chicory, almonds, natural amaretto flavor, and organic figs.

I also feel a bit dehydrated. All that water was good, but I also went to the bathroom about 25 times yesterday, so it didn't stick around.

This afternoon I got out a bit of mucus too. The first sign of what I hope will come in another day or two. I won't bore you with a picture of that...

I'm going to do everything just exactly the same as yesterday, except I'll take 3 digestive stimulators instead of 2. Gotta keep the bowels moving.

Today worked out well, despite the fact that I got a late start. I still feel good and haven't been having any major cravings either. The toxin absorber is quite filling and the vegetable broth seems to quell hunger nicely. I'm still going to the bathroom many, many times a day. No doubt this is normal because of the extra liquid I'm taking in. But, no mucoid plaque yet.

This is the double recipe for vegetable broth given by Blessed Herbs. It's very simple to make and quite delicious.

Ingredients:

4 quarts of distilled water

2 potatoes, scrubbed and diced

6 carrots, scrubbed and sliced

6 stalks of celery, scrubbed and sliced

2 onions, peeled and sliced

Bring the water to a boil in a large stockpot. Add the cut veggies to the water and turn the heat down so that the pot will simmer. Cover pot completely. Simmer for 40 minutes. Strain out all the veggies. Done.

You can add 4 TBS of Miso after you strain out the veggies if you like the taste of it. I do like the taste and think it adds a nice nutty flavor to this simple soup broth. I also added a couple drops of hot sesame oil to my bowl to give it a little bite, but it's not necessary. I just like the hot stuff...

If you want to make less, just cut the recipe in half. I ate up the single recipe in my first day, so I doubled it the next time. I don't really want to make it every day of my 5 day fast.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Today is the first day of the 5 days of juice fasting. I feel confident, now that I've worked out my issues with the toxin absorber, that the juice fast will go well even if I get some cleansing reactions.

Also, I may experience a deep cleansing reaction which would be a reappearance of old injury's or heath problems as my body works to heal these lingering weaknesses. According to them, a deep cleansing reaction mimics the signs of particular past experiences, but in a much shortened version and is preceded the day before by an "on top of the world" feeling.

They also say that these symptoms usually pass quickly. Blessed Herbs recommends an enema or colema made with peppermint tea for physical symptoms and chamomile tea for emotional swings.

According to Becky yesterday, I may have to increase my digestive stimulators as my elimination my slow down during the next 5 days. I decided to take 2 pills tonight instead of 1 to ward off that problem. I may increase my intake of the digestive stimulators by 1 pill a day to ensure that I continue to get good results.

My feeling about this is that it will probably take a couple days for me to start detoxing, and then I may get some symptoms. It would probably be good if I do, as I'd like this cleanse to do as much as it can for me.

Well, I didn't have any hunger really. The vegetable broth was a big help in that regard. I had 3 bowls of it in between my toxin absorber rounds. Taking 100 pills was quite a challenge. It's quite a bit of work to juice 5 times a day (and clean up), make the veggie broth and take all those pills. I felt fine and am interested to see what tomorrow will bring. I capped off today with a double chamomile tea with liquid stevia sweetener. Very pleasant so far....

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Well, the ginger toxin absorber was even more repugnant to me last night. I took too long to drink it and it began to gel up, making it even less palatable. I've already called Blessed Herbs again about capping the absorber up and am now waiting for the master herbalist to get back to me. Apparently we've had to go to the top to get the answer. I hope to God I can cap this stuff up and stay on track.

I was a little hungry last night, but I think it was a craving instead of real hunger. I saw popcorn on TV and immediately wanted some. The feeling passed without incident.

I forgot to mention that I've been having a cup of coffee every morning with soy milk. Apparently, it can be difficult to try to quit coffee during the cleanse. According to the literature of the bowel cleanse, they recommend a green tea, but I don't really like tea. I just switched to soy milk instead of cream. One cup is all that they allow.

Hurrah! I got a call back from Becky this afternoon and was cleared to cap up all the toxin absorber. She said that the Master Herbalist told her that the only thing to watch out for was bloating, which would mean that I wasn't digesting the caps well enough. No problem. I already know from my blood stabilizer herb pills that I was digesting them just fine. I know this because when I take them on an empty stomach, I'll feel the herbs churning in my stomach 5 minutes after I take them.

Here's my set up for capping the toxin absorber. The long ends of the caps are already in the Cap-M-Quik and the short ends are in the little glass bowl in the picture above. The toxin absorber is in the pyrex measuring cup. The empty packets are to the left.

Here, the 50 caps are filled and ready to get their little hats on. It didn't take too long. I'll have to go back to the health food store and get some more caps though, since I've got 3 more days worth of toxin absorber to fill.

I capped up 11 of the packets, enough to get me through the next 2 days, and came away with 215 size "0" pills. 215 divided by 11 = 19.5. So, each packet contains 19-20 capsules of matter. Quite a bit actually.

I took the 20 toxin absorber pills with 24 oz. of juice and water (8 oz. fresh organic apple juice and 16 oz. distilled water). It worked perfectly and I didn't have any bloating.

I admit that I was a little bit hungry today, but it wasn't too bad. Hopefully tomorrow won't give me too many problems in that area. I still haven't decided whether to take my blood stabilizers or not. I have to wait 2 hours after I take the toxin absorber to take them, so I'm not sure I really want to. I may not need to anyway, so I'm going to wait and see.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Welcome to day two of my first bowel cleanse. Fortunately, I've already had the required 2 good bowel movements today and will only be taking 1 digestive stimulator pill before dinner.

However, I got up to go to the bathroom about 6 times last night before I could go to sleep (the result of all that water) and got up much later than I had planned. My cure is to drink all my extra water early and get the peeing over with before I go to bed. Good plan, we'll see if it works.

After the gritty experience of yesterday's toxin absorber, I'm thinking that it might be wise to drink it straight down and not swish it around in my mouth. I was a bit grossed out by it yesterday. I may have to pill the stuff up and take it with juice instead. I may call the blessed herb people and ask if it's OK to do that.

O.K., so I called the Blessed Herbs people and they were very nice and helpful. I asked if I could cap up the toxin absorber and Becky, the woman I spoke to, didn't know the answer to that, but is having their expert call me tomorrow morning with the answer. If capping the toxin absorber is not an option they will send me the peppermint flavor absorber free of charge. Apparently the peppermint is less gritty.

I'll suffer through the ginger flavor again tonight and wait for the answer tomorrow.

I'm very fond of Greek and Italian foods but heavy pasta's and carbo's make me crazy. This salad is light and yummy and can be customized in many ways. I'm giving you the recipe for the vegetarian version, but I love it with grilled tuna too.

Throw all the ingredients (but the dressing) into a bowl and mix well. Add a bit of the dressing and mix, then taste. Add a bit more if you need it. You can vastly improve this salad by grilling sushi grade tuna or organic chicken and adding it to the mix. Grilled shrimp would also be yummy.

Serve with toasted pita wedges as an appetizer or as a sandwich stuffing or wrap. It also goes well into endive leaves if you don't want the bread.

This salad keeps for a couple days in the fridge. Expect the zucchini to give up a bit of liquid overnight, so you might want to drain it a bit and add more dressing the next day (if it lasts that long).

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Hummus is a really easy, really yummy treat. I won't be eating too much of it once I go mostly raw, but for my bowel pre-cleanse it will be O.K.

Ingredients:

2 15.5 oz. cans garbanzo beans

1/4th - 1/2 C. organic cold pressed olive oil

1/8th - 1/2 tsp. sea salt

1/8th tsp. Mrs. Dash mesquite seasoning

3 lemons juiced

2 garlic cloves

1/8th - 1/4th tsp. hot pepper flakes

freshly ground pepper to taste

distilled water

Empty all of the ingredients into a food processor except the water. Run the processor and carefully pour a little water into it until it has the consistency that you like. Be careful, runny hummus is not so nice. You can add a little more oil if you like it too. I usually run the machine for a minute or two so I know that the hummus is nice and creamy. Taste and adjust the seasonings if you want to.

This recipe is nice because it fits perfectly into a 32 oz. plastic container. Hummus is good in the fridge for up to a week. I serve this up with grilled whole wheat pita bread wedges and organic carrots and celery. Happy munching!

For these first 3 days I cannot have any dairy products, fried foods, sugar, iodized table salt, or meat. All of these items clog, congest, slow and depress the elimination process.

Breakfast

2 blood stabilizer pills, 1 policosanol and 1 chromium picolinate pill taken with freshly juiced fruits and veggies (about 2-3 oz. thinned with distilled water). I use the extra 64 fl. oz. that I'm supposed to be drinking to make this drink.

2 egg omelet with 1/2 sauteed onion and 1/2 organic avocado sliced.

I threw the salt in the picture because I wanted to show what brand I use. This is a really tasty sea salt that I get at my local health food store and have been using for years now. Rock and sea salts have lots of trace minerals and are good for you in reasonable amounts. Yes, I salted my omelet just a little. I also burnt it a little...oops. It was yummy anyway.

Timer set for 2 hours. I'll be juicing apples for my first toxin absorber then.

O.K., here's my opinion of my first toxin absorber. A trifle too gritty and it swelled up like a sponge in my stomach especially after the extra 16 oz. of water. Very bloating, but the feeling dissipated in about a half an hour so it was alright. I can already tell that the 5 days juice fasting will be very intense.

Ahhhh, the rawvenge is REALLY on now. Today is the first day of my bowel cleanse. So, for the next 9 days I will be blogging every day to cover everything that I am doing and going through, complete with appropriate pictures. Yes, pictures of the mucoid plaque that may exit my body as well. Yes, it will be yucky. You have been warned....

The following is a general overview of what I will be doing each day of my bowel cleanse.

After the main cleanse is done, continue to take the rest of the digestive stimulators and toxin absorbers until they are all gone (the digestive pills before dinner and the toxin absorber before bed).

There you have it, the overview of what I will be doing for the next 9 days.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Today I'm going to show you how to cap your own herbal pills. I decided to do this because of the very good cost savings and because I'm a do-it-yourself control freak. It's a bit fussy and took several hours, mostly because I had to 'grind to a powder' one of the ingredients (Bitter Melon, in the photo above) before I could pill everything up.

My coffee grinder was not exactly up to the task. It ground up the Bitter Melon well enough but got overheated and pooped out before I could do it all. I got enough to do my blend though...

First, buy your herbs! The photo above is dried Bitter Melon. I use the wonderful Internet site Mountain Rose Herbs. They've been in business since 1987 and have a large selection of loose herbs, teas, oils, tinctures, extracts, spices, and hydrosols, as well as containers, tools and utensils and assorted other yummies. Their prices are very competitive and the web site is a breeze to use.

The vast majority of their herbs are either organic or wildcrafted and are of a very high quality. My sister and her husband have been using them for years and are very pleased with their service. I got my first shipment from them several days ago and am very happy with my purchase.

I decided to make a herbal concoction to help me balance my blood sugar and curb my food cravings. My research led me to a combination of herbs and trace minerals that I hope will do the trick for me.

Based on some of the herbal concoctions I have been researching, I came up with this proportionate recipe for the herbs I intend to cap. I bought both the Chromium Picolinate and the Policosanol at my local Health food store already capped. Both of these require very small amounts to be consumed every day and I couldn't cap them accurately myself.

1 part Banaba leaf

5 parts Gymnema

5 parts Cinnamon

5 parts Fenugreek

10 parts Bitter Melon

26 parts total in each pill and to make up my batch. I decided to use 1 quarter cup as my 1 part measure.

I decided to use size "0" vegetarian capsules (again from Mountain Rose Herbs) which hold approximately 680 mgs of material. Using this number as the basis of my math, I figured that if I have a total of 26 parts of herbs in my concoction, that each part will weigh 26.15 mgs (26 divided into 680 mgs)

This means that in each pill there will be:

26.15 mgs of Banaba Leaf Extract........25.3 grams per 1/4th cup

130.75 mgs of Gymnema Sylvestre.......24.9 grams per 1/4th cup

130.75 mgs of Cinnamon...................24.3 grams per 1/4th cup

130.75 mgs of Fenugreek...................26.9 grams per 1/4th cup

261.5 mgs of Bitter Melon..................18.8 grams per 1/4th cup

These amounts are approximate, but reasonably accurate.

I also weighed each herb as I measured it out by the quarter cup. The weights are also listed above.

Weighing the herbs. I'm lucky enough to have a very nice scale that weighs in grams, so this part was easy. Accurate weights are important if you need to be careful with your proportions. For this blend it's not essential, but I like to keep track of what I did in detail.

My Bitter Melon is done, so now it's on to assembling my blend of herbs. As you can see, I have my scale, a notebook for recording all the weights and stuff, measuring cups, the herbs and my trusty cup of coffee which will soon be off limits. Boo-hoo....

I used a 2 lb. sugar container to hold my herbal blend and it fit very well. Full to the brim, in fact. I spent a few minutes shaking the container to mix all the herbs well. I also wrote the recipe of the herb blend on a post-it and taped it to the container. So, when I need to remake it, I won't have to go dig up the recipe. The total amounts of each herb in my blend was as follows;

1/4th C. Banaba Leaf

1 1/4th C. GymnemaSylvestre

1 1/4th C.Cinnamon

1 1/4th C.Fenugreek

2 1/2 C. Biller Melon

6 and 1/2 cups total.

I didn't compute the amounts correctly on the label and had to change it later, so the amounts listed in the photograph are wrong. I did catch my mistake though. The amounts listed above are correct.

Time to cap the pills!

The assembly of the Cap-M-quik tray was beyond simple. You just put the little end pieces on the outer pegs, turn the higher side towards the inside of the tray and lower the holder piece with all the holes in it onto the 4 inner pegs.

Following the instructions on the back of the Cap-M-quik box, I pulled each cap apart and put the longer one into each of the holes in the tray. 50 holes in all. I put the short end in a little bowl for safe keeping.

Then I took about 1/4 cup of my herb mixture and spread it across the top of the tray. I used the little card scraper to move the herbs into all the little holes. There's no need to use any force to cram the herb in, it drops in nicely.

This is what happens when you don't read the simple instructions carefully enough. I pulled the tray off all the pills instead of turning the little end pieces and lowering the tray completely. I did it right the second time around.

Then just put the little ends back on the top of each pill and pull it out of the tray. I usually pushed the cap completely on once I got it out of the tray. They seem to click into place when on well.

This Italian herb bottle was perfect to hold 300 of my newly capped herb pills. It took 1.5 cups of my herb blend to fill these 300 pills, and since each batch makes 6.5 cups, I end up getting about 1300 pills per batch. All told I spent 3 or 4 hours doing the whole thing, but I was computing, grinding and photographing too, so it will take you less time to finish without all these extra tasks.

I spent almost $80.00, including shipping, for all the herbs and the capsules (NOT including the chromium, $5.49 or the policosanol, $16.99). I bought a pound of each of the herbs except the banaba which was 3.3 oz. (The Cap-M-quik was $12.35, but as one time purchase I didn't include it as a part of the herb price.)

Since I get 3 and a half batches of herb blend from the amounts that I bought and I get 1300 pills from each batch I make, I end up getting about 4550 pills. ( I only get 2.5 batches from the Bitter melon, so add $10.00 to the cost.) The extra cost of 4000 more empty caps is $96.00. Since most pills come in 60-90 count bottles, at 90 pills per bottle I end up getting 50.5 bottles of herb blend for $186.00. That's $3.68 a bottle. Not bad, huh?

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Emily and I'm a 49 year old, mid-western gal graphic designer trapped in the body of an alien. I mean it! I no longer recognize myself when I look in the mirror. I see myself and wonder "Who the hell am I anymore?". I look like I'm wearing a gigantic fat suit, only it's not a suit. Ahhhhhhhhh......... wake me up from this bizarre reality game show I'm living in!!!

But I digress....

As you can see from the pictures above there is a VERY ugly truth happening here! And there's no surprise how I got this way. The same way everybody gets here; bad food choices, lack of exercise and a lifetime of antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, food colorings, preservatives, additives and refined junk I've either ingested or inhaled.

As for the picture above, it's an easy guess that I'm the one on the left. On the right we have my lovely sister, Miss Priscilla, who has been raw for 8 years now! Eight YEARS!!!! I took these photos to give you a clear idea of the urgency of the situation and as a good comparison for how I should look. My sister is five foot eleven inches tall and I'm five eight. There should be three of us standing there though, because I weigh enough for 2...

Uh, it's time for a change.....

So I have a plan. A rather involved plan with several steps to get me back on the path to heath.

Step 4: Do a sustained parasite protocol to rid myself of yummy things like candida, worms, flukes and other nasties.

Step 5: Reestablish my immune system with a probiotic protocol (the specifics of which I'm still working out)

I'm just now setting up for my big first step, the bowel cleanse! I found a very nice product online from the people at Blessed Herbs. The kit arrived in the mail a couple days ago and I'm very pleased with it so far. This is a 9 day cleanse with 5 juice fasting days. I'll be juicing my own organic apples for the fasting part of this cleanse and promise to report honestly on the effects of the cleanse (including relevant photos) in gory detail.

I don't believe that varnishing the truth does anyone any good. If it doesn't work, is expensive or complicated, then you might as well know it from the get go! And trust me, there is nothing cheap about the health industry, including high quality food.

About Me

I'm an ex-graphic designer hiding out from Corporate American by designing itty-bitty clothes for Blythe and blogging all about it.
On the side, I bitch, whine, moan and complain about my health and weight issues while I try to do something about them...